Here’s a summary of my exciting day on February 1, 2012

Frank LaBanca visited Sandy Hook School in Newtown for digital learning day.  There he joined a fourth grade and second grade class.  Using iPod touches and the StoryKit app, Frank, Ted Varga, teacher, and the fourth grade students created riddles that modeled the literary device personification.  Students selected an inanimate object in the room to personify.  Some examples of their work include:

sample | sample | sample | sample | sample

Frank also visited second grade teacher Robin Walker’s class.  Using the same app, students recorded observations of growth patterns of their Wisconsin Fast Plants that they are growing as part of a science unit.  Some examples include:

sample | sample | sample | sample

I am presenting my research on both problem finding and reflexivity at The Qualitative Report Annual Conference, in Ft. Laduerdale, FL. Here are the resources for the presentation:

Reflexivity Paper |	Reflexivity Presentation |	Creative Student Scientists Paper |	Creative Student Scientists Presentation

My graduate class and I attempted to distill the essential features of problem solving on our class last week.  We superficially compared our results with Newell and Simon’s (1972) model.  Since they have had time to incubate the ideas, I am wondering what they think of the relationship between the two. (P.S. – is my list what we discussed?)

cryhavok.org

My team and I have been talking lately about the notion of teaching videos. “Distance education” processes have been around for a long time, and have manifested in different ways. The challenge for the asynchronous delivery of content is that it be engaging. What does that mean? For a video, engagement might mean:

• interactive with the viewer (making the viewer complete a task to be an active, instead of passive, learner)
• interactive internally (when two or more people can talk and interact, it makes the video more engaging)
• short (too long, tuned out)
• specific (content should be very targeted)
• robust (include appropriate visual stimuli)
• seeing the speaker(s) (there’s something powerful about seeing a person talk and watching the specific content)

This video visually enhances some of this vision:

Tomorrow, presenting at the 2nd biennial International Instructional Leadership Conference, I am going to make a supposition that 21st century skills are inquiry process skills. Below, my prezi presentation:

This past summer I was the program director for the Green Light Academy.  Here’s a description from the website:

A Beacon of Hope
Green Light Academy is one of many educational and cultural programs offered by Beacon Preservation, Inc. a nonprofit organization designed to promote environmental conservation, sustainable energy options, and “green collar” skills training through lighthouse preservation. Green Light Academy is made possible through a grant from the Connecticut State Department of Education, the 1772 Foundation,  and the generous support of private donors. For 2010, GLA is open to public high school students from Bridgeport, New Haven, Norwalk, Stratford, Fairfield, and Oxford.

The Green Light Academy (GLA) Is a four-week summer residential program for high school students (grades 10-12) that takes place on the college campus of Western State University In Danbury, Connecticut from Sunday, June 27th through Friday July 23rd, 2010. GLA students live In university housing, dine In the Westside Student Center, use WCSU’s classrooms,  conduct research in the libraries and computer labs, conduct experiments In the laboratories of WestConn’s new state-of-the-art Science Building, explore the Ives Nature Center, and enjoy the many playing fields, gymnasiums, and recreational facilities on both the midtown and westside campuses. Our faculty and guest speakers are experienced professors and certified teachers committed to engaging the learner through hands-on skill-buildling exercises. We believe that academic achievement Improves when students develop a new Interest and appreciation for science, technology, and sustainable energy by doing real-world “applied learning” lessons and hands-on activities.

Here is a great video summarizing our month-long program.  Images sometimes capture a program’s essence so much more effectively than words can . . .

Definition for theory:

From: wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; “theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses”;

From: Merriam-Webster.com Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Theory in Science

a scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about such observations, and is put forth as a principle or body of principles for explaining a class of phenomena

Some important theories in science:

• kinetic molecular theory
• evoluion theory
• theory of relativity
• plate techtonics theory

I often hear those who talk about proving a theory.  An inevitable contradiction because:

Prove is an absolute

I prefer:

• make plausible
• draw conclusions
• make inferences
• verify
• determine validity
• interpret
• confirm
• demonstrate
• provide evidence
• authenticate

Therefore, I really do not like reading about the word ‘prove,’ especially in student work.  How do we effectively inform students about theories, most importantly that they are NOT conjecture, but are unifying concepts supported by FACT?

from: uic.edu

One of the challenges in teaching is to keep students engaged throughout a class period. In science during a lab period, this is fairly straight-forward, as hands-on inquiry experiences tend to take more extended time.  However, when there is an extended period for which there is no lab activity planned, it is important to keep students engaged by varying the activities so students maintain high levels of active engagement.

from: gallerynucleus.com

In my biology class today, we were working on solving pedigrees – a clear problem solving, lateral thinking inquiry activity. 

However, solving pedigrees for an hour and a half is probably too much.  To keep students engaged, I read the third paragraph from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, [full text] which specifically discusses an inbreeding situation – gets kids attention, you can make a pedigree, and connects literature to science:

 Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch ; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other – it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the “House of Usher” – an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.

We then continued with some additional problems, and later I showed a 4-minute video about Huntington’s Disease.  We paused and mapped the pedigree based on the speaker’s comments.  

I was attempting to access different learning style preferences to help students understand the concepts.  The period was over before the students and I realized.  We’ll see how well the skills have developed!

Though I spend my days working with high school students, I have a deep passion for open inquiry research and am lucky to have the opportunity to work with doctoral candidates in the Ed.D. Instructional Leadership Program at Western Connecticut State University.  This semester (and for the next 5,) I will be providing secondary advisement to two students and primary advisement to one. 

PART #1

Yesterday, one of my secondary advisees had her proposal defense.  A proposal defense occurs when the student has identified and defined his or her study (problem finding).  First, the student provides the advisors with a ~20-page document for review a few weeks prior.  We provide feedback, the proposal is modified, and then a presentation is conducted to share the design with the committee.   Yesterday was that presentation.  As we listened and subsequently discussed, I couldn’t help but consider some of the important behaviors and actions the student had undertaken.  My colleague, Krista Ritchie, and I are working on a paper about promoting  problem finding and our recent email discussions synthesizing our research have lead us to generate a teacher and student list of strategies.  Here are the student strategies, which I clearly saw on display yesterday (and part of our working list for the paper):

1. Identify and work with an authentic audience
2. Excellent written and oral communication skills
3. Know there is value
4. Novel approach
5. Focus on areas of personal interest.
6. Be a critical consumer of information.
7. Create a support system. 

We are going to elaborate on each of these as well as provide a “teacher list.”

PART #2

After the defense, in the adjacent lounge, the professors then gathered for one-on-one meetings with primary advisees.  This was a great time for each professor (4 of us) to meet individually to discuss ideas, goals, and progress.  What was more striking to me, though, was the culture.  Student sitting with advisor, advisors and students sharing information both between the two and among the group.  Meeting dynamics that went from one-on-one, briefly to small group, back to one-on-one.  There was an underlying sensation of inquiry permeating the room.  Deep, specialized learning occurring without the traditional walls, desks, or blackboards.  Learning for learning’s sake, bidirectional knowledge flow, challenging ideas – wow!  This is what learning is supposed to be like.  As we constantly consider educational reform we really need to think of ways to make authentic inquiry the bedrock of learning.  This is where growth really occurs.

Earlier this year, I was asked to participate (as a subject) in a research study examining teacher’s expertise as it relates to pedagogy, subject expertise, and inquiry (research) skills.  During an interview, I was asked to recall a meaningful experience that influenced my teaching.  I have orally told this story many times, but the researcher was recording and transcribing.  I was fortunate to receive a copy of the transcript and am sharing it below:

Question:  Can you recall what experiences informed your understanding of science teaching?

My response:

Yes! I can very much pinpoint the event that really helped focus and change my perception of myself as a science teacher. And it took place in March 1998. I was working with a teacher and he said, Frank you would really like this event, is called the Junior Science and Humanities symposium.  It takes place at UConn and I really encourage you to go. I think you are going to get a lot out of it.  Take a couple of students if you would like, and by the way, can you take my son too.  He’s at the right age and I think it would be good for him to go. So I went to this symposium at the University of Connecticut.  What I found were students presenting results from their research. It took place in 15-minute platforms: they did 15 minute talks followed by questions and answers from the audience.  I was sitting in the audience utterly mesmerized by these students – how well they were presenting.  I sat back and said what a fool I had been. As a neophyte teacher, I was teaching the way I was taught.  Here I had my mind opened to remind me what really made a very positive influence in my development as a scientist and that was working in a research laboratory.  Watching those students I realized what was meaningful to me – what made me a good student of science.  It was not the didactic book knowledge but rather the meaningful exploration of science as a way to develop knowledge. So I walked away from that event saying this (authentic, applied research) is what I should be doing.  From that point, I really started to shape my philosophy of education.  At that point I did not know what inquiry meant or perhaps I had not defined it as well as I do today, but I understood the value of doing authentic research.  The Junior Science and Humanities Symposium really shaped my whole philosophy of teaching – that we needed to move students towards the individualization and the authentic opportunities for them to do meaningful science. So I can confidently say that was the most important experience in my professional career to date.

There is so much more to the story too.  At that symposium there were also students presenting posters.  I went up to one of the students who has developed this device and it was basically a homemade spectrophotometer:  it’s a device used to measure interference of light.  He was using it for photosynthesis or some whatever reason. He was very proud of himself and I was chatting with him and his teacher happened to be there. The students was from Greenwich High School, which was the next town from where I was teaching.  I met this teacher, we really got on very well, and he became a mentor for me to inculcate me to doing science research process with students.  He really was a wonderful teacher and it was an amazing experience in the sense that I recognized what I valued in my education and also I met someone who shared the same values as I did.  We both had extremely positive experiences doing research with students.  He became a mentor for me.